BATON ROUGE - Whatever comes our way, the City of Baton Rouge says it's ready. The city-parish says it has activated the hurricane checklist and will spend the next few days ahead of Tropical Storm Ida doing more of what it does every day - drainage work.

Crews were moving around the parish Thursday, clearing drainage pipes and storm drains. Kelvin Hill with the city-parish says it's kept them busy.

"We've pulled out more than 2.6 million pounds of debris out of our drainage areas," Hill said. "We've cleaned more than 1,500 storm boxes. We've cleaned over 16,000 linear feet of pipe."

That's since the end of June. All that piping connects and eventually makes its way to drainage canals. It's all part of the $20 million drainage initiative funded by American Rescue Plan dollars. The parish is working its way through phase one of the project while handling other jobs like storm prep.

"We'll have crews out checking outfalls and ditches to be sure that they're clear and clean and ready to go," Hill said.

The parish says it's also picking up drift that's in outfalls and canals to make sure the storm water drains as it should. Barricades are being staged in areas that are prone to flash flooding. Crews will be working up until the storm arrives and afterward.

The city-parish says everyone is on stand-by. Issues should be reported to 3-1-1.